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At any given time in the United States 65 million caregivers partner with their care receivers in a transformative choreography of love and letting go. While most would call the dance arduous, I think few would call it joyless. Daily transcendence of self in the name of love ultimately is liberating, although it is difficult to believe that when your elderly loved one is smearing lipstick on the lamp shades.

“Today I threw the Christians to the lions but I got away just in time,” my mother announces as I pull into the parking lot at Applebee’s. Later I learn that she watched “Ben Hur” at adult daycare but today I don’t know that. I respond carefully, focusing on her lifelong appetite for grilled salmon.

Thirteen years ago, my experience with Alzheimer's disease began. My mother was "diagnosed" first. When A.D. began to rear it's ugly head, my mom had recently been diagnosed with macular degeneration. We saw every opthamologist and retinologist in the area. All of the doctors agreed that she was losing her vision which was causing the confusion.